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TRUE PHOTONIC
Nobody Finishes a Movie.
They run out of money. A computer that runs on light is about to change what a frame costs.
AI & FILM FORUM · TORONTO · MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2026
Want to know more?
For the recording of this session, for more information, and to be whitelisted, email Oslyn Lewis at Route 66 Token.
If you want to check my numbers
- I'm Done With Overnights The article this talk came from. The render arithmetic, the permit, and the passes.
- Keep Computing The book. Why computing has to leave the transistor, in plain language.
- substack.com/@derekwbailey Where I write about all of this as it gets built. Free.
What this is
True Photonic is building computers that do their logic in light instead of in transistors. The switch at the centre of it has been measured by a third party at 150 to 200 femtoseconds. The computer itself is not built yet. The first machines are to be demonstrated within the 2026 horizon.
Rendering is the first commercial job we are aiming at, because it is the one every production already pays for twice, in electricity going in and heat coming out. When the cost of a machine hour falls, the number of passes a director gets stops being a budget decision. That is the subject of the talk.
Derek W. Bailey is the founder, chairman and chief executive of True Photonic, and the author of Keep Computing: How Light Solves Computing's Impossible Problem.